Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Harry, Ian, Jan, Jenny, John, Michele, Suzanne.
Apologies: Adele, Gill, Jonathan, Kaz, Laura, Magda, Pip.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Suzanne announced…
(1) Mini-Arts Festival, taking place in the Robinson Institute, Glaisdale, on Saturday 31 May 2025. Daytime session: 11am–5pm. Evening session: 7pm–11pm. Details here: https://3-minutearts.uk/mini-arts-festival/
(2) The Esk Valley News Quarterly is looking for writers. For all details: see https://www.eskvalleynews.co.uk/
John has a book-signing for his recently published novel Paint It Jack in Scarborough on 7 June 2025, which happens to be during the Books By The Beach event. Paint It Jack has also been favourably reviewed in recent editions of Whitby Advertiser and Whitby Foghorn.
John also mentioned that 14 Fairy Doors are due to appear in divers places at Pannett Park on 14 June 2025.
Members’ Readings
Jan — continued reading her history of Christiana I’Anson, an Edwardian society lady who elopes to New Zealand with her lover Isiah and her three children. The Birmingham Divorce Court has declared the runaways untraceable. Now in Tasmania, going under the surname North, Isiah and Christiana have built a lean-to on a patch of land, but conditions are tough and Christiana eventually tires of Isiah’s preoccupation with money and his lost reputation. Taking the three children she flits again to Sea Lake, Victoria, now going under the name Maydwell.
John — read a further instalment of Bugle Blast, his 3rd novel. With the new mills arriving, weavers no longer have the occupational standing they once had, being neither apprenticed nor timeserved.
In spite of heartfelt pleas, the young hero’s father can no longer get the putter-out to take his work, and the family have to sell their possessions to buy food just to stay alive. One day Father dies in the garden while tending his beloved roses. An uncle, long estranged from the father, agrees to take in his orphaned niece and nephew. and they enjoy a life of comparative luxury for a while. But eventually they are required to work at the Mill.
Ian — distributed copies and read a short essay entitled Growing Up In The 50s, revealing the comparatively harsh life endured by children on the English South Coast before postwar reconstruction began in earnest. This is an expanded prose version of the poem published in 2023 on this site.
Jenny — continued reading from her period novel in-progress based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields.
It is now 1776. Irish adventurer Andrew Stoney, soon to become known as “the World’s Worst Husband”, plots in the pub with his friends Mr Bates, a muckraking journalist, and Dr Jesse Foote, a medic of flexible morals, how to marry Mary Bowes and get his hands on her fortune. Andrew learns that Mary is extremely superstitious, so the friends hatch a plan to introduce her to a society conjuror whose pronouncements can be bought. Mr Bates suggests publishing nasty anonymous letters against Mary, allowing Andrew to defend her in print.
Mary’s loyal servant Lizzie is dismayed when Mary, having received a mysterious letter, asks for her heavy dark walking cloak to go out that night on an assignation. Lizzie’s husband, also a household servant, resolves to follow her at a distance, pistol in pocket. He sees Mary keep tryst with Andrew Stoney by the frozen lily pond.
Harry — distributed copies and continued reading his 1960s seafaring memoir, Sea Wife. We have reached Chapter 28: A Streetcar named Desire. As newly-appointed First Radio Officer on the Marwarri, he has been permitted to bring his newlywed wife Beryl on the voyage to the Middle East and India. But on the journey home the ship is diverted across the Atlantic to Savannah, Georgia. The purser has friends there who host the party right royally, with outsized steaks sourced from white goods of enormous size. The author bluffs his way with his meagre knowledge of British cars.
Michele — described her plans for a new novel based on the historical personage of James Barry (born Margaret Anne Bulkley in 1789), a conspicuously successful military surgeon who spent his entire adult life as a man, successfully concealing his biological gender (which is still a matter of dispute). His first posting was to Cape Town, SA, where he came to the attention of the Governor, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Somerset, with whom he formed a close if ambiguous relationship. This in time led to an allegation of buggery against the latter, which at the time was a capital offence.
Suzanne — distributed copies and read an article: AIDS and deaf people – the BSL signer’s story. This told the heart-wrenching story of James, a gay deaf person who had been brought up on the then prescribed model of forcing deaf children to abandon signing for speech, which had left him unable to read or write and scarcely able to communicate with anyone – until at the Triangle Club in Manchester he’d discovered GSV (Gay Sign Variation), plus a whole new world of comradeship. Especially with Gary, his first lover. James had completely misunderstood a diagnosis of HIV+ told him by a non-signing doctor, thereby neglecting his health until it was too late and he collapsed in the street from AIDS complications.
The meeting closed at 1:15 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 